The present invention relates to vending machines, and more particularly to scheduling vending machine service to have the vending machines restocked.
Vending machines should be restocked promptly to ensure maximum sales and customer satisfaction. On the other hand, too frequent restocking involves wasteful service calls by service personnel.
To facilitate optimum restocking, vending machines 110 (FIG. 1) can be equipped to report the inventory and sales data to a computer data base system 120 over a network 130. Vending machine owners use computer systems 140 to connect to a computer server 150 via the Internet using World Wide Web. Server 150 accesses the data base 120 and provides the owner's client system 140 with data received from the owner's vending machines 110. The owner can use the data to schedule the vending machines for the restocking service.
Improved vending machine service scheduling methods are desirable.